Descriptive Summary
Give a descriptive summary of the data with comments.
A descriptive summary lets the reader see data for a single construct or variable a glance:
Qualitative: Describe summary themes with selected text quotes
Quantitative: Descriptive stat:
a) Categorical: By a frequency table, with percentages that add to 100%, where the mode is the most frequent category
b) Ordinal: If you lay all the points out in a line, the rank of the middle point is the median, and the range is the difference between minimum and maximum score. Use stem-leaf displays to show percentiles.
c) Interval: Any number of interval scores can be summarized by three descriptive numbers:
i) Frequency: How many measurements (N).
ii) Central tendency: The mean (µ) or average.
iii) Dispersion: Standard deviation (SD) or variance (σ).
- For normal distributions, the mean +/- 1 SD is 68% of the scores, +/- 2 SD is 95% of the scores, and +/- 3 SD is 99% of the scores
For many variables, descriptive data can be given as a cross-tabulation of frequencies by categories, or as a means table by causal categories like gender or usability. Either way, descriptive data shows the direction in which one thing affects another, e. g. are males better or worse than females?
In such summaries round off data appropriately to the error, e. g. if your data is accurate to two decimal places, give 3.74 not 3.742356 (even if the statistics package gives 3.742356).
If you present a descriptive data summary table, don't forget to comment on what it means in the text.
Tags: Well Written, Quantitative, Results
Example(s)
(Use a descriptive name, e. g. "ITExample". Or click on an existing collection and edit it.)
